Rickey Day

Merry Crimble to all you free subscribers. Consider a paid sub for you or as a gift to a loved one!

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! As far as I’m concerned though, December 25th is Rickey Henderson’s birthday. He would have turned 67 today. 

The one of a kind soul and I had somewhat of an interaction back in the day. In the late 90’s, Shea Stadium ran a promotion first on Friday nights, then later Wednesday evenings. If you brought an empty Pepsi can or bottle and were willing to wait on a very long line in the late afternoon, you got into the Pepsi Picnic Area, aka the left field bleachers, for free. It was named the “Picnic Area” because they cooked burgers and hot dogs before and during the game. (Those were very much not free.) 

Well, one night, a friend of mine and I spotted a burger patty on the left field warning track. How it got there, who knows. We didn’t want Rickey Henderson, very good Mets leadoff hitter and future Hall of Famer to hurt himself by slipping on some beef. “Rickey!” we screamed, “There’s a burger on the field!” We must have yelled this ten times before Henderson turned around, gave the most cursory of glances, then flipped us the bird. 

I loved it. I knew right then and there I would tell that story for the rest of my life. Fortunately, he never stepped foot on the burger. 

Welp, Pete Fairbanks, the last late-inning reliever on the market, took himself off of it by signing a one-year, $13 million contract with the Miami Marlins, the team weirdly obsessed with beating the Mets no matter how crappy they otherwise are. I would love to know if the Mets offered him more than one year or not. It’s quite possible they did not due to injury concerns and his Raynaud’s syndrome. 

A few minutes after the Fairbanks deal was announced, Jon Heyman tweeted that the Mets signed RHP Mike Baumann to a minor league deal. In four seasons in the bigs, the 30-year-old pitched to a 4.95 ERA (83 ERA+) and 4.59 FIP. For the Yakult Swallows in Japan last season, Baumann’s ERA was 4.15. The timing wasn’t great - Fairbanks would have been a better signing, obviously. But pitching depth is never a bad thing.